"Facile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the recurring convulsions which overthrew successive dynasties, and transferred the crown to usurpers, with a facile rapidity, otherwise almost unintelligible, it is easy to comprehend that the mass of the people had the strongest possible motives for passive submission, and were constrained to acquiescence by an instinctive dread of the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the most favourable modern specimen of the buoyant amateur. Possessing a big heart, kindly feeling, a brilliant wit, and a facile pen, he treated art as his playfellow and never as his master. And in the spirit in which his work was executed so must it be judged. The work of an amateur artist possessing a distinct vein of humour is, in my opinion, far more entertaining than that of ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... inconceivable hardships, was cradled one day in the year 1573 in Touraine. From her mother, Francoise Babou, she inherited both beauty and frailness; for the Babou women were famous alike for their loveliness and for a virtue as facile even as that of Marie Gaudin, the pretty plaything of Francois I., who left Francois' arms to find a husband in Philip Babou and thus to transmit her charms and ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... for all their portraits. By merely altering the name beneath, they changed all there was to change; one and the same block did duty in turn for Romulus or Robert the Devil.[574] Specimens of this facile art swarm indefinitely; they are scattered over the country, penetrate into hamlets, find their way into cottages, and make the people acquainted with the doughty deeds of Eglamour and Roland. We now find ourselves ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... remarkable for his numerous and varied talents than for his warm and affectionate heart, rich imagination, great love of humour, and deep and earnest piety. He was a facile versifier, an elegant prose writer, an able botanist and physiologist. Possessing a fine ear, rich voice, and great musical taste, he not only took his vocal share in part-song, but wrote several melodies, which have ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... they might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and gross superstition made them the facile tools of their ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... comparisons with other work which might force him to diminish his own opinion of himself. During the eighteen months Philip had known him Clutton had grown more harsh and bitter; though he would not come out into the open and compete with his fellows, he was indignant with the facile success of those who did. He had no patience with Lawson, and the pair were no longer on the intimate terms upon which they had been ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... waited. The incident at the Sandringham, the sight of Cassy, her mother's facile insinuations, these things had distressed her, because, and only because, they had prevented her from enjoying the innocent pleasure of the innocent visit to the rooms of her betrothed, whom she loved with a love that was too pure and too profound, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... quasi-Japanese type, many of them very beautiful. These panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of dark metal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, and the great structural lines of the interior. The facile grace of these panels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centre of the scheme. Graham's eyes came back to the Council, and Howard was descending the steps. As he drew nearer his features could be distinguished, and Graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out his cheeks. His ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... soil and of laborious cultivation. The mere literary critic, accustomed to dwell with even more attention on the form than on the substance of a work, commends above all the admirable skill shown in the selection and grouping of the incidents, the facile hand with which an obscure and entangled theme is divested of its embarrassments, the frequent brilliancy and picturesqueness of the narrative, the judicious mixture of anecdote and reflection, and the harmony and clearness of the style. These are the qualities which make ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... altezza d' uomo, e nel mezzo della stanza v' era un altro scaffale simile o tavola per tenervi scritture, e tale da potervi girare intorno. Il legno di questa tavola era ridotto a carboni, e cadde, come e facile ad imaginarselo, tutta in pezzi quando si tocco. Alcuni di questi rotoli di papiri si trovarono involti insieme con carta piu grossolana, di quella qualita che gli antichi chiamavano emporetica, e questi probabilmente ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... for grace of action and harmony of color," were such as to make him, even more than Cimabue, "the founder of the true ideal style of Christian art, and the restorer of portraiture." "His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile, and richly creative nature." The contemporary of Dante, his portrait of the poet has been discovered in recent times on a wall in the Podesta at Florence. "He stands at the head of the school of allegorical ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... turned towards the procession, he observed scowling looks, and heard low growlings from the crowd as it swayed slowly past. He knew enough to be conscious of what this meant; but he felt at the same time disinclined to humiliate himself by a too facile compliance. A proud American, in the midst of a people he had learned to despise—their idolatrous observances along with them—no wonder he should feel a little defiant and a good deal exasperated. Enough ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... hostess—had sometimes merely an apartment at a hotel; perhaps the family was established in one of the furnished lodgings which stretch the whole length of the Lung' Arno on either hand, and abound in all the new streets approaching the Cascine, and had set up the simple and facile housekeeping of the sojourner in Florence for a few months; others had been living in the villa or the palace they had taken ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... in amount, does not cause the great drain upon the Treasury. But if money can be obtained by the simple issue of evidences of debt, and without any provision to sustain the credit of the Government by taxation, the process of supply is too facile. The funds so easily procured are in danger of being too profusely spent. Individual responsibility in money-matters, aided by direct self-interest, is usually more efficient in imposing limits to improvidence than a general sense of duty on the part of official ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... may be read in Lord Wharncliffe's edition of her Life and Letters. She is a prominent figure in the literature of the period, and made several passing contributions to it, but apart from a few facile and far from decent verses her letters are the sole legacy she has left behind her for the literary student. Some of them, and especially those addressed to her sister the Countess of Mar, are often coarse; those to her daughter the ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... must be, too, the writing of a book! He had never realised it before. A real book, then, meant putting one's heart into sentences, telling one's inmost secrets, confessing one's own ideals with fire and lust and passion. That was the difference perhaps between literature and mere facile invention. His cousin had never dared do this before; shyness prevented; his intellect wove pretty patterns that had no heat of life in them. But now he had discovered a big idea, true as the sun, and able, like ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... to see us, and sat down to talk in a friendly and familiar way. I do not know a man of more facile intercourse, nor with whom one so easily gets rid of ceremony. His conversation, too, is interesting. He talked, to begin with, about Italian food, as poultry, mutton, beef, and their lack of savoriness as compared ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... quarrel before they were done with it, will opposed to naked will. And oddly enough Cleggett found his admiration grow as his determination to gain his point increased. For she fought fair, disdaining the facile weapon of tears, and when she yielded she ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... and highly coloured suggestions wholly out of harmony with the pastoral setting. Like most of the professionals, she exaggerates the emotional element and quite fails to do justice to Rosalind's facile wit and really brilliant mental qualities. Gerard will do Orlando, but rumor says he is epris of your sometime friend, Miss Meredith, and his memory is treacherous and ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... we shall all be burned in our beds.' Had the British party in the room been awake, Mr. Williams would have roused a mutinous protest against this arrogant mandate. But Germans are generally mild and facile in their tempers; so the light was complaisantly extinguished. Yet, as there were no curtains, it struck the Germans that the danger was really none at all; for bed-clothes, massed upon each other, will no more burn than the leaves of a ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... follows in Mr. Child's early edition, "from the second edition of Ritson's Robin Hood, as collated by Sir Frederic Madden." It is conjectured to be "possibly as old as the reign of Edward II." That the murder of a monk should be pardoned in the facile way described is manifestly improbable. Even in the lawless Galloway of 1508, McGhie of Phumpton was fined six merks for "throwing William Schankis, monk, from his horse." (History of Dumfries and Galloway, by Sir ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... countless chambers around them. We have collected from other parts of our lives mental furniture and bric- a-brac that time and association have endeared to us, have installed these meagre belongings convenient to our hand, and contrived an entrance giving facile access to our living-rooms, avoiding the effort of a long detour through the echoing corridors and disused salons behind. No acquaintances, and but few friends, penetrate into the private chambers of our ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... more appalling, the chief means, which so eminently aided the bourgeoisie to take their position, namely, the wide-spread influence of secret societies, whose workings even lately have astonished the world by the facile and apparently inexplicable revolutions effected in a few days, are now in the full possession of the lower classes, who, no longer rude and unintelligent, but possessed of leaders of experience and knowledge, can ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... certain claim on respectful consideration. That his talent achieved itself, or ever could have achieved itself, he himself would have been the last to affirm. But he is a monumental failure, more interesting than many facile triumphs. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... devenus bien plus forts dans la dissertation erudite, mais j'aurais un eternel regret pour cette moyenne et plus libre habitude litteraire qui laissait a l'imagination tout son espace et a l'esprit tout son jeu; qui formait une atmosphere saine et facile ou le talent respirait et se mouvait a son gre: cette atmosphere-la, je ne la trouve plus, et je la regrette."—(Chateaubriand et son Groupe Litteraire, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... arduous, onerous, complicated, intricate, hard; uncompliant, intractable, perverse, fastidious, exacting. Antonyms: facile, light, easy. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... has such a facile, emotional tail as the red squirrel. It seems as if an electric current were running through it most of the time; it vibrates, it ripples, it curls, it jerks, it arches, it flattens; now it is like a plume in his cap; ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... inspection were available. These could reveal something, but of course the inner secrets were for the keener insight of the microscopist alone. And even for him the task of investigation was far from facile, for the central nervous tissues are the most delicate and fragile, and on many accounts the most difficult of manipulation ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... governmental organization or lack of organization—one cannot regard Galds as other than a social conservative, who could be considered a radical nowhere outside of Spain. In how many plays does a conventional marriage furnish the facile cure for all varieties of social affliction (Voluntad, La de San Quintn, La fiera, Mariucha, etc.)! The only socialist whom he brings upon the stage—Vctor of La de San Quintn—has received an expensive education ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... qui etaient a table avec lui. Il fit venir de la voiture du pain et de l'eau qu'il prit avec avidite. On attendait la nuit pour continuer la route; on n'etait qu'a deux lieues d'Aix. La population de cette ville n'eut pas ete aussi facile a contenir que celle des villages ou on avait deja couru tant de perils. Monsieur, le Sous-Prefet, prenant avec lui le Lieutenant des gend'armes et six gend'armes, se mit en route vers la Calade. La nuit etait obscure, et le temps froid; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... mistaken idea of being eloquent by means of the diction of eloquence. This is a source of bad Literature. There are certain views in Religion, Ethics, and Politics, which readily lend themselves to eloquence, because eloquent men have written largely on them, and the temptation to secure this facile effect often seduces men to advocate these views in preference to views they really see to be more rational. That this eloquence at second-hand is but feeble in its effect, does not restrain others from repeating it. Experience never seems to teach ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... e for a Cambril, as dost, most, ghost, bright, right, sign, design, and short, notwithstanding e Cambril as hence, since, prince, possible, facile, but Prince and Simple proper Names be spoken, with i long, that an unknown Reader mistake not ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... to the nature and conduct of princes; at others he clarifies his own conception of poetry and poets by recourse to Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on eloquence in Seneca the elder and applies it to his own recollection of Bacon's power as an orator; and another on facile and ready genius, and translates it, adapting it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... much,—never more, says Morris, "than six or ten feet above the water, and for the most part trailing their legs in it; but either on the water or under it, every movement is characterized by the most consummate dexterity, and facile agility. The most expert waterman that sculls his skiff on the Thames or Isis, is but an humble and unskillful imitator of the dabchick. In moving straightforward (under water?), the wings are used to aid its progress, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... he found a gaiety and contentment which fairly startled him. Within the walls of the grim old river-fortress the ancient foes were making peace in the reconstruction of industry. The wise forbearance of the conquerors, and the facile temper of the conquered, provided, far beyond hope, a solution for what was, prima facie, a difficult situation. "It is very surprising," writes an officer of the Highlanders, "with what ease the gaiety of their tempers enables them to ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... All other cases are the same. The brain is always more kind than the heart; the brain is always more willing than the heart to put itself to a great deal of trouble for a very little reward; the brain always does the difficult, unselfish thing, and the heart always does the facile, showy thing. Naturally the result of the brain's activity on society is always more advantageous than the result ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... command of great wealth, yet no temptation to be idle. The tale of Ruskin's industry for the next fifty years is one that would be incredible if it were not true. His brief and dim experience of married life seems hardly to have affected him. As a critic of art and ethics, as the writer of facile magnificent sentences, full of beauty and rhythm, as the composer of word-structures, apparently logical in form but deeply prejudiced and inconsequent in thought, he became one of the great influences of the day, and wielded not only power but real domination. The widespread delusion ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... closed his Discourse of the Three Unities with the admission that he had "learnt by experience how much the French stage was constrained and bound up by the observance of these rules, and how many beauties it had sacrificed". [Footnote: Il est facile aux speculatifs d'etre severes; mais, s'ils voulaient donner dix ou douze poemes de cette nature au public, ils elargiraient peut-etre les regles encore plus que je ne sais, si tot qu'ils auraient reconnu par l'experience quelle contrainte ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... place of birth (c. 1363), was left a widow with three young children at the age of twenty-five. Her sorrow, uttered in verse, is a genuine lyric cry; but when in her poverty she practised authorship as a trade, while she wins our respect as a mother, the poetess is too often at once facile and pedantic. Christine was zealous in maintaining the honour of her sex against the injuries of Jean de Meun; in her prose Cite des Dames she celebrates the virtues and heroism of women, with examples from ancient ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... one can telegraph to a flying train from the overhead wires. Ether is a far better medium of transmission than iron. A wire will now carry eight messages each way, at the same time, without interference. What will not the more facile ether do? ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... perceptible to the most careless and undeniable by the most perverse of readers is supported by the public judgment of men qualified to express and competent to defend an opinion, have I thought it allowable to adopt this facile method of explanation. No scholar, for example, believes in the single authorship of Pericles or Andronicus; none, I suppose, would now question the part taken by some hireling or journeyman in the arrangement or completion for the stage of Timon of ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this thankfulness of awakening from the hellish nightmare of the Terror, Mr. Verity's facile imagination tended to run to another extreme. With all the seriousness of which he was capable he canvassed the notion of a definite retirement from the world. Public movements, political and social experiments ceased to attract him. His appetite for helping to make the wheels of history go round ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Christmas volumes which the year has brought to our table this one stands out facile princeps—a gem of the first water, bearing upon every one of its pages the signet mark of genius.... All is told with such simplicity and perfect naturalness that the dream appears to be a solid reality. It is indeed a Little ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... Facile with phrases of length and Latinity, Like honorificabilitudinity, Where is the maid could resist your vicinity, Wiled by the impudent grace of your plea? Then your vivacity and pertinacity Carry the day with the ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... always a clear distinction between what was punished as immoral and punished as irreligious. This applies to the four volumes of the works of the Carmelite Mantuanus, published at Antwerp in 1576, of which nearly all the copies were burnt. This facile poet, who is said to have composed 59,000 verses, was especially severe against women and against the ecclesiastical profession. In 1664, the Journal de Louis Gorin de Saint Amour, a satirical work, was condemned, chiefly apparently because it ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... step of the process instead of the result, there can hardly be two opinions, unless the reader prefers an impression of the wandering inquisitive gentleman to one of the people questioned. Probably these barren dialogues may be set down to indolence or to the too facile adoption of a trick. They are too casual and slight to be exact, and on the other hand they are too literal to give ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... advances and the facile intimacies of artists, Durtal had been attracted by this man's fastidious reserve. It was perfectly natural that Durtal, surfeited with skin-deep friendships, should feel drawn to Des Hermies, but it was difficult ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... quickly and with it the hope that the trouble is gone forever or is at least rapidly disappearing. With these manifestations of improvement come also a greater ease in concentration, a greater and more facile power-of-will and an ambition that shows signs of rekindling, with ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... will," he said, with his facile assent. But his tone expressed slight intention, and his indifference bespoke a too great wealth of "chunes"; he could feel no lack in some unremembered combination, sport of the moment, when another strain would come at will, as sweet ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... confounded her visitor, who felt that if he had come to gratify his curiosity he should be in danger of going away still more curious than satiated. She added in her gay, friendly, trustful tone—the tone of facile intercourse, the tone in which happy, flower-crowned maidens may have talked to sunburnt young men in the golden age—"I am very familiar with your name; Miss Chancellor has told me all ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... large extent arbiters of our fortunes, for we can by an indomitable will dispel many, many seeming mountains that encumber our way. But we have much to unlearn, and especially that the road to financial prosperity is not chiefly the dictum of the facile mouth, but through the manifestation of skilled hands and routine of business methods, however much the mouth may attempt to compete, conscious of its wealth of assertion and extent of capacity. While it is ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... rosy limbs, 90 Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang. But of the stuffs one can be master of, How I divined their capabilities! From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk 95 That yields your outline to the air's embrace, Half-softened by a halo's pearly gloom; Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure To cut its one confided thought clean out Of all the world. But marble!—'neath my tools 100 More pliable than jelly—as it were Some clear primordial creature ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... their rivals the English, there was a degree of picturesqueness about French colonisation, that, in the present day, strongly claims the attention of the American poet, novelist, and historian. Their dealings with the Indian aborigines—the facile manner in which they glided into the habits of the latter—meeting them more than half-way between civilisation and savage life—the handsome nomenclature which they have scattered freely, and which still holds over the trans-Mississippian territories—the ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... the thing which, once accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely lyrical or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution, and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with a legend. It is one thing to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Goodhue, whose designs for type have already been mentioned, is a [104] most facile and careful letterer. Although his name is more intimately associated with Blackletter (examples of his work in that style are shown in the following chapter), he has devised some very interesting ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... est littera, quam vocant "agma," cujus forma nulla est et vox communis est Graecis et Latinis, ut his verbis: aggulus, aggens, agguilla, iggerunt. In ejusmodi Graeci et Accius noster bina G scribunt, alii N et G, quod in hoc veritatem videre facile non est. ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... similarly, at the beginning of the Civil War, the Government was in constant struggle with Courts-Martial to impose sentences of severity adequate to the offence; leaving the question of remission, or of indulgence, to the executive. These facts are worthy of notice, for there is a facile popular impression that Courts-Martial err on the side of stringency. The writer, from a large experience of naval Courts, upon offenders of many ranks, is able to affirm that it is not so. Marryat, in his day, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... 1784-85 was passed in Richmond, in the society of which town Mr. Gallatin began to find a relief and pleasure he had not yet experienced in America. At this period the Virginia capital was the gayest city in the Union, and famous for its abundant hospitality, rather facile manners, and the liberal tendency of its religious thought. Gallatin brought no prudishness and no orthodoxy in his Genevese baggage. One of the last acts of his life was to recognize in graceful and touching words the kindness he then ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... leap I gained all the thrill that I missed with my arrow. Such facile grace I never saw. Without an effort they rose, hovered an instant in midair, straightened their wonderful bushy tails as an aeroplane readjusts its flight, and soared level across the obstacle. One final downward curve of that beautiful counterbalance landed ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... faciem, non bene facit; iste et pro buccella panis deseret veritatem. Here is noted, that a judge were better be a briber than a respecter of persons; for a corrupt judge offendeth not so lightly as a facile. ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... newspaper. So I followed the script: the trite phrases of a letter from a French-speaking girl to an Englishman. "I think of you always, always. Do you think sometimes of me?" And then I vaguely realised that I was reading a man's private correspondence. And yet, how could one consider these trivial, facile French phrases private? Nothing more trite and vulgar in the world than such a love-letter—no newspaper ...
— Wintry Peacock - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • D. H. Lawrence
... the green island which gave him birth—John Henry Foley. Less vigorous, no doubt, than his eminent master, Charles Bell Birch, he yet imparted to his works great life and spirit, and the charm of a facile and picturesque execution, and, even in this day of renovation and growing strength in the practice of that stately art, sculpture in this country will miss him in its ranks. ["Hear! Hear!"] From amongst ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of 1798 placed it; its aims are not other than were those of Coleridge and of Keats. But within that defined sphere it has developed a surprising activity. It has occupied the attention and become the facile instrument of men of the greatest genius, writers of whom any age and any language might be proud. It has been tender and fiery, severe and voluminous, gorgeous and marmoreal, in turns. It has translated into ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... narrative, but this is not material. Dickens, with the usual "novelist's licence," found it convenient often-times to take a nucleus of fact, and surround it with a halo of fiction, and this may have been one of many similar instances. His wonderfully-gifted and ever-facile imagination was never ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... any dog-gone auty-mo-bile that ever infested the trail. Infest is a word that Casey would have used often had he known its dictionary reputation. Having been deprived of close acquaintance with dictionaries, but having a facile imagination and some creative ability, Casey kept pace with progress and invented words of his own which he applied lavishly to all automobiles; but particularly and emphatically he applied the spiciest, most ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... favour at court and a government appointment; was banished to Siberia, but regained the favour of Paul, and was recalled; on Paul's death he returned to Germany, but went back to Russia from fear of Napoleon, whom he had violently attacked; he had a facile pen, and wrote no fewer than 200 dramatic pieces; his strictures on the German university students greatly exasperated them, and one of them attacked him in his house at Mannheim and stabbed him to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... on this point, because the extreme difficulty (or rather impossibility) of determining the true relations of becoming and being, of time and eternity, is constantly tempting us to adopt some facile solution which really destroys one of the two terms. The danger which besets us if we follow the line of thought natural to speculative Mysticism, is that we may think we have solved the problem in one of two ways, neither of which is a ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... learning or his sagacity. He finds himself obliged to admit the conspicuous advance which the Gospel had made before Constantine's accession, and employs every nerve to invent sufficient natural causes to account for it. What a facile task would he have had of it, if he had but bethought him that Christianity, instead of having been to an enormous extent successful was, in fact, waiting, in comparative failure, the triumphant aid of a military ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Puritan Colonel's, and she does not adopt the somewhat tiresome "doormat" attitude of wifely adoration towards the subject of her memoir which "Mad Margaret" (as Pepys called her Grace of Newcastle) thought fitting when she took up her fatally facile pen to endow her idolised lord with all the virtues and all the graces and every ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... in facile agreement. "By God, you're right! For example, I've always thought there wasn't sufficient control on Cumulative! You can bet your life Arnold would know ... results at that point could be juggled a little, say if ...
— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse
... simple-minded old man was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere onlooker could have imagined. To persons possessing a great deal of that facile psychology which prejudges individuals by means of formulae, and casts them, without further trouble, into duly lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might seem to be doing simply what all other men like to do—carrying out objects which ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... was his true vocation. To renounce pleasure and discipline the mind; to live a life of self-denial, submitting himself humbly to the inspiration of the great masters. . . . To be serene, like this old man; to avoid that facile, glib, composite note—those monkey-tricks of cleverness. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... show clearly that he fully understands our position and appreciates the importance of the principles for which we are contending. It is a curious coincidence, that his style of address bears a close resemblance to what may be called the American manner. Rapid, but distinct, in utterance, facile and fluent in speech, natural and graceful in gesticulation, he might almost be transplanted to the halls of Congress at Washington without betraying his foreign ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... repose their reason upon the scale of being, have to triumph over them who recur to any other expedient of solution, and what difficulties arise, on every side, to repress the rebellions of presumptuous decision: "Qui pauca considerat, facile pronunciat." In our passage through the boundless ocean of disquisition, we often take fogs for land, and, after having long toiled to approach them, find, instead of repose and harbours, new storms of objection, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... in the physics of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. "Invenietur verbum istud, Humidum, nihil aliud quam nota confusa diversarum actionum, quae nullam constantiam aut reductionem patiuntur. Significat enim, et quod circa aliud corpus facile se circumfundit; et quod in se est indeterminabile, nec consistere potest; et quod facile cedit undique; et quod facile se dividit et dispergit; et quod facile se unit et colligit; et quod facile fluit, et in motu ponitur; et quod alteri corpori facile adhaeret, idque madefacit; ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... provisions. Siward's profile, as it bent in the lamplight over the paper, was very engaging. The boyish note predominated as he talked while he drew, his eyes now smiling, now seriously intent on the sketch which was developing so swiftly under his facile pencil. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... empty measure. So "This is the Cat that Killed the Rat" is expanded into five pictures. The dog has four, the cat three, and the rest of the story is amplified with its secondary incidents duly sought and depicted. This literary expression is possibly the most marked characteristic of a facile and able draughtsman. He studied his subject as no one else ever studied it—he must have played with it, dreamed of it, worried it night and day, until he knew it ten times better than its author. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... it. To such men the profession next in rank after that of the soldier robbing in the service of the sovereign was that of the robber plundering on his own account. 'Materia munificentiae per bella et raptus. Nec arare terram, aut expectare annum, tam facile persuaseris, quam vocare hostes et vulnera mereri; pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore acquirere, quod possis sanguine parare.' 'War and rapine supply the prince with the means of his munificence. You cannot persuade the German to cultivate the fields and wait patiently ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... against this illustration: I am only concerned to point out that it illustrates an argument entirely different from the common pulpit one, which (I suspect) we should have to endure far less frequently were it our custom to burn our dead, and did not interment dig a trap for facile rhetoric. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... official proposal to give it, though I confess not without misgivings, if only on account of the serious fatigue and hoarseness which public speaking has for some years caused me; while I knew that it would be my fate to follow the most accomplished and facile orator of our time, whose indomitable youth is in no matter more manifest than in his penetrating and musical voice. A certain saying about comparisons ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Richmond, or that the Argus wielded the power exerted in the days of Edwin Croswell; but the anti-ring forces in the interior of the State cheerfully mustered under his leadership, while the Argus, made forceful and attractive by the singularly brilliant and facile pen of St. Clair McKelway, swayed the minds of its readers to a degree almost ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Tartari nigri domo, Veniret? Illic summa tenebrarum lues, Ubi pedor ingens redolet extremum situm. Hic autem amoena regna, et dulcis quies; Ubi serenus ridet aeternum dies. Mutare facile[1] est pondus immensum levi; "Summos dolores maximisque gaudiis." [1] For facile, the word votupe was substituted in ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... kindred subjects; and the letters I have received, and the replies they have drawn from me, go far to make me doubt the accuracy of the accepted belief that "letter writing has become a lost art." A full mind with a facile pen makes letter writing a joy, and both of these attributes I think I may fairly claim. My correspondence with Alfred Cridge was kept up till his death a few years ago, and his son, following worthily in the footsteps of a noble father, has taken up the broken threads of the lifework of ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Porteous would have nothing to do with the tailor's trade. He was dissipated, he was devil-may-care; there was nothing better to be done with him than to ship him abroad into the military service of some foreign State, the facile resource in those days for getting rid of the turbulent and the troublesome. John Porteous went into foreign service; he entered the corps known as the Scotch-Dutch, in the pay of the States of Holland, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... followed with a spirited vivace. Her hollow-cheeked pallor remained unstained, but her thin lips were set and her hard eyes were harder. She played with determined nonchalance and an extraordinarily facile rapidity, and Miriam's uneasiness changed insensibly to the conviction that these girls were learning in Germany not to be ashamed of "playing with expression." All the things she had heard Mr. Strood—who had, as the school prospectus ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... indeed for consideration by a god who has had a hand in besetting "with pitfall and with gin" the road we are to wander in. But I submit that universal forgiveness would hardly do as a working principle. Even those who are most apt and facile with the incident of the woman taken in adultery commonly cherish a secret respect for the doctrine of eternal damnation; and some of them are known to pin their faith to the penal code of their state. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with the facile tongue— That bloodless warfare of the old and young— So seek your adversary to engage That on himself he shall exhaust his rage, And, like a snake that's fastened to the ground, With his own fangs inflict the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... companion, the goddess of Comana. The original name of this goddess seems to have been Ma, but the Greeks, who also knew her, had likened her to Enyo, their goddess of strife and warfare; hence in these days of facile identification the Romans' course was clear, and she became straightway Bellona, called by the name of their old goddess of war. Of all the chapters of the history of such identifications none ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... be found in the work of Albertus Magnus, who, among other things, particularly recommends "the brains of a partridge calcined into powder and swallowed in red wine," a remedy which is also much insisted upon by Platina, who, in praising the flesh of the partridge, says, "Perdicis caro bene ac facile concoquitur, multum in se nutrimenti habet, cerebri vim auget, genituram facilitat ac demortuam ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... the Prince-Royal,—whom we saw once in a domestic flash-of-lightning long ago, [Antea, Book vi. c. 7.]—is encouraged to proceed with the improved German article, MERCURY or whatever they called it; vapid Formey, a facile pen, but not a forcible, is the Editor sought out by Jordan for the French one. And, in short, No. 1 of Formey shows itself in print within a month; ["2d July, 1740:" Preuss, Thronbesteigung, p. 330; and Formey, Souvenirs, i. 107, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... may sound rather forced and unreal to those who have not attended a congress, and the cheers may ring hollow across intervening time and space. Neither would it be good for this or any movement to rely upon facile enthusiasm, as easily damped as aroused. There is something far more than this ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence. The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious. Not even Philip was more industrious in the cabinet. Not even Granvelle held a more facile pen. He wrote and spoke equally well in French German, or Flemish; and he possessed, besides; Spanish, Italian, Latin. The weight of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common industry of a lifetime, and although many volumes of his speeches and, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... general electric influence is the main remedial agency, there is no reason why the possible—or, I should say, probable—good to be obtained from its local influence should not be realized—the less so that it is so facile to obtain this in the bath, by means of the surface board. While individual cases will undoubtedly call for modifications, I have found the following plan to answer best in certainly more than half the cases that have come under my observation: The first five minutes of the ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... by her with more alarm than prudery. Phoebe was fonder far of Ishmael than of Archelaus; she told herself that she admired Ishmael more—he was so much the gentleman.... What she did not know was that a rebel thing in her, the thing for which poor facile, soft little Phoebe had been as much created as though she had been a field-mouse, responded to Archelaus because it felt he was so much the male. Phoebe had been safeguarded all her short life by her notions of gentility and by her fear, the fear, not of consequences, but, less base than that, ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... Haud facile emergunt, quorum virtutibus obstat Res angusta domi: [They do not easily rise whose virtues are held back by the straitened ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... learn the treasures of faith and love shut up in the bosom of that silent girl—to learn how much she loved him—only him. (A new lesson for one who had trifled with so many, and given and taken such facile oaths!) ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... is always quietly sure of herself. That is why she will not be hurried, but moves through her gradual scheme with so leisured a serenity; why her style, fluent and facile, never forces its natural eloquence; why her humour plays with a diffused light over all her work and seldom needs the advertisement of scintillating epigrams. Judged by almost every standard to which a comedy like this should be referred, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... facile learner; her thorough ease in the rudiments of arithmetic and in the handling of her own language delighted him. His plan of tutelage, although the result of long contemplation, and involving many radical ideas regarding the training of children, ideas which ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... personality, and perhaps most beautiful in his talent. It enabled him to do such things as he did without being at all anguished for the things he did not do, and indeed could not. His talent was not a facile gift; he owned that he often went day after day to his desk, and sat down before that yellow post-office paper on which he liked to write his literature, in that exquisitely refined script of his, without being able to inscribe ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... debris of much consulting, had grown accustomed to having her trivial gossip interrupted by the advent of fresh letters and a new supply of specimen ores. She had grown glib in reading off the unfamiliar phrasing of the letters, facile in writing down the totally unspellable words of Opdyke's dictated replies. In all of this, however, she had been made to feel aware that she herself stood first to Reed, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... her person, but to the day of his death he had cursed her for anserine stupidity. An unlovely, loveless and unloved old man. Why should Blanquette have wept over him? She had not the Parisian's highly strung temperament and capacity for facile emotion. She was peasant to the core, slow to rejoice, and slow to grieve, and she had the peasant's remorseless logic in envisaging the elemental facts of existence. Pere Paragot was wicked. He was ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... hoc Esaiae est carnificina Rabbinorum, de quo aliqui Judaei mihi confessi sunt, Rabbinos suos ex propheticis scripturis facile se extricare potuisse, modo; Esaias tacuisset." Hulse, Theol. Jud. P. 318, quoted ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... a vigorous and pleasing style, and his facile pen has obviously been made expert by much use. In dealing with some of the more threadbare problems, such as the drink question and the sporting mania, he brings considerable novelty and freshness ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... of that adopted by the ethnic priests. Dreamers have not had that variety in their follies, that has generally been imagined. That some of these things should be extensively admitted, by no means affords proof of their existence. Nothing appears more facile than to make mankind admit the greatest absurdities, under the imposing name of mysteries; after having imbued him from his infancy with maxims calculated to hoodwink his reason—to lead him astray—to prevent him from examining that which ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... In his facile comprehension of German and Latin books, he had long since forgotten his first painful steps: now in his agony they recurred to mock him. He had learnt these alien alphabets by observing in some bulky Hebrew books that when the printers had used up the letters of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... chateau de Zahringen? Il est au nordest de Freiburg, a trois kilometres environ; c'est une promenade tres facile. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... goods, in Woodhouse. He was a tall, thin, elegant young man with side-whiskers, genuinely refined, somewhat in the Bulwer style. He had a taste for elegant conversation and elegant literature and elegant Christianity: a tall, thin, brittle young man, rather fluttering in his manner, full of facile ideas, and with a beautiful speaking voice: most beautiful. Withal, of course, a tradesman. He courted a small, dark woman, older than himself, daughter of a Derbyshire squire. He expected to get at least ten thousand pounds with her. In which he was disappointed, ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... men presented the greatest possible contrast—Harry Kaperton had elegantly flowing whiskers, a round young face that expressed facile excitement at a possible disturbance, and sporting garb of tremendous emphasis. Elim's face, expressing little of the tumult within, harsh and dark and dogged, was entirely appropriate to his somber greenish-black dress. Kaperton gestured toward ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... how far Kitty would have succeeded in her good purposes: these things, so easily conceived, are not of such facile execution; she passed a sleepless night of good resolutions and schemes of reparation; but, fortunately for her, Mr. Arbuton's foibles and prejudices seemed to have fallen into a strange abeyance. The change ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... Etonian, but only now and again does the author give us anything sufficiently amusing to evoke a laugh. However, in the course of perusal, I have smiled gently, but distinctly. Had the Octogenarian already told many of these stories to his intimates, to whom their narration caused as much facile entertainment as was given to the friends of Mr. Peter Magnus, when he signed himself 'AFTERNOON,' in substitution for his initials, 'P.M.'?" And it is related how Mr. Pickwick rather envied the ease with which Mr. Magnus's friends were entertained. If so, then is the Baron to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... and the fluency of their vows show them to be 'false as dicers' oaths,' mere verses of the moment, made to please a facile mistress. One long poem, which cannot be styled a Rispetto, but is rather a Canzone of the legitimate type, stands out with distinctness from the rest of Poliziano's love-verses. It was written by him for Giuliano de' Medici, in praise of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... manufacturers from St. Louis, had made matters worse. Such wealth!—such careless, vulgar, easily gotten wealth!—heaped up by means that seemed to the outsider so facile, and were, in truth, for all but a small minority, so difficult. A commonplace man and a frivolous woman; yet possessed, through their mere money, of a power over life and its experiences, such as he, Faversham, might strive for all his days ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... brigand's cave. It was the hour at which women of fashion go out for their shopping and their calls, and he related all the scandals of their conduct, false or true. He dwelt on all these stories and calumnies with a horrid pleasure, as though he rejoiced in the vileness of humanity. Did this mean the facile misanthropy of a profligate, accustomed to such conversations at the club, or in sporting circles, during which each man lays bare his brutal egotism, and voluntarily exaggerates the depth of his own disenchantment that he may boast ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... Delirant on the tramp goes littoralwise. His Flag at furl, portmanteaued; drains to the dregs The penultimate brandy-bottle, coal-on-the-head-piece gift Of who avenged the Old Sea-Rover's smirch. Marchant he treads the all-along of inarable drift On dubiously connivent legs, The facile prey of predatory flies; Panting for further; sworn to lurch Empirical on to the Menelik-buffered, enhavened blue, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... 6 mai 1527, le connetable, a cheval, la cuirasse couverte d'un manteau blanc, marcha vers le Borgo, dont les murailles, a la hauteur de San-Spirito, etaient d'acces facile.... Bourbon mit pied a terre, et, prenant lui-meme une echelle l'appliqua tout pres de la porte Torrione."—De l'Italie, par Emile Gebhart, 1876, p. 255. Caesar Grolierius (Historia expugnatae ... Urbis, 1637), who claims to speak as an eye-witness (p. 2), describes "Borbonius" as "insignemque ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... purported to belong to the very class he was used to victimize, and, moreover, had a gold watch, and, doubtless, a full purse. Nothing more ridiculously inopportune could have befallen me, or more dangerous; for his class are as cosmopolitan as waiters and concierges, with as facile a gift for language and as unerring a scent for nationality. Sure enough, the fellow recognized mine, and positively challenged me with it in fairly fluent English with a Yankee twang. Encumbered with the mythical sister, of course I stuck to my lie, said I had been ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... kindlily of The Queen Pedauque as Dumas would have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,—somewhat as in the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the Conrad ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... with hottest hate against wrong. His natural force was not abated, his health robust, and his conviction unsubdued. His deeply lined and pale face was transfigured with the glow of righteous indignation. The aged statesman was in his old House of Commons vigor. "There was the same facile movement of his body, and the same penetrating look as though he would pierce the very soul of his auditors; the same triumphant march of sentence after sentence to their chosen goal, and yet the same subtle method of introducing qualifying clauses ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... may illustrate another thing too—viz. how simple, facile weakness of character may be the parent of all enormities. Herod did not want to kill John. He very much wanted to keep him alive. But he was not man enough to put his foot down, and say, 'There! I have said it; and there is to be no more talk about slaying this ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... apprehension of God, unto whom confession of sin doth belong! Alas, 'tis easy for men to entertain such apprehensions of God as shall please their own humours, and as will admit them without dying, to bear up under their sense of sin, and that shall make their confession rather facile, and fantastical, than solid and heart-breaking. The sight and knowledge of the great God is to the sinful man the most dreadful thing in the world; and is that which makes confession of sin so rare and wonderful a thing. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... knew how to suggest what might be useful to him as a diplomat, in the careless intercourse of the table, and amidst the jests of a carouse at Court. Bristol did his best to aid the Spanish diplomat. Charles's facile temper made him forget Bristol's double-dealing, and Bristol, having regained some of his favour, "had an excellent talent in spreading that gold-leaf very thin, that it might look much more than it was." [Footnote: ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the feelings of doubt that existed in the minds of the members of the Mosaic Club. He yielded readily to the invitation of Mrs. Markham and then exerted himself to please, showing a facile grace in manner and speech that soon made him a welcome guest. He quickly drifted to the side of Miss Harley, and talked so well from the rich store of his experience and knowledge that her ear was more for ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... great teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of versi d'amore, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Heloise seventeen. Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende,[65] and Minerva was not the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... make choise of none, but such as represent the fairest images: They are no lesse sollicitous to diversifie their words by agreeable modifications, their inflexion hath very little uneasie in it, it is all of it aequally facile and gay; their diminutives are exceedingly rellishing, because there is something more than ordinarily pretty in them, they are rich in derivatives, and compounds, not only because their pronunciation is more harmonious, ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... B—— hath pronounced, "Citius Maevii Aeneadem quam Scribleri istrus tragoediam hanc crediderium, cujus autorem Senecam ipsum tradidisse haud dubitarim:" and the great professor Burman hath styled Tom Thumb "Heroum omnium tragicorum facile principem:" nay, though it hath, among other languages, been translated into Dutch, and celebrated with great applause at Amsterdam (where burlesque never came) by the title of Mynheer Vander Thumb, the burgomasters receiving it with that ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... committee, and subsequently second Vice-President of the General Fair organization, General Rosecrans being President, and the Mayor of the city, first Vice-President. To the furtherance of this work, Mrs. Mendenhall devoted all her energies. Eloquent appeals from her facile pen were addressed to loyal and patriotic men and women all over the country, and a special circular and appeal to the patriotic young ladies of Cincinnati and the Ohio valley for their hearty co-operation in the good work. The correspondence and supervision of that ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... explain a disagreeable fact is not to change it; his name was written in pitiful subordination. And as for the public assembly—he would have sacrificed some years of his life to have stepped forward in facile supremacy, beneath the eyes of those clustered ladies. Instead of that, they had looked upon his shame; they had interchanged glances of amusement at each repetition of his defeat; had murmured comments in their melodious speech; had ended by losing all interest in him—as intuition apprised him ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and musty—no time to light the lamps; but Mr Armitage, the facile, the adroit, a perfect Mercury and old in experience, called in four linkmen waiting by their ladies' empty chairs in the ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... some miscellaneous volunteers, grouped in posts of four and five men, lay hour after hour unable to show a finger or move a hand. Hundreds of Chinese rifles at the closest possible range poured in a never-ending fire on these facile targets, and the sandbagged positions, literally eaten away by old-fashioned iron bullets in company with the most modern nickel-headed variety, crumbled down to practically nothing. Lying on your back at these advanced posts and looking at the sloping roofs of Prince Su's ornamental ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... enough getting from bough to bough, which stood straight out, and was facile for one who mounted as if he were going up a ladder; but there was the rope, which kept catching and the noise it made as he had to shake and snatch to free it in its passage amongst ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... of his gestures, the clear ring of his voice, expressed admirably the intellectual and nervous force which he possessed in a higher degree than any man I have ever come across. He began without hesitation, and spoke throughout with the trained and facile eloquence of which he was master. "I shall, I am sure, be believed," he said, "when I emphatically assert that nothing could be more distressing to me than the notion—if I should be driven to accept it—that the liberal measures on ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson |
